About Hyung S. Kim
Hyung S. Kim is a Seoul-based photographer and founder of Studio Zip, where he has served as Director and President since 1996. A graduate of Seoul Institute of the Arts, Kim has dedicated his career to capturing profound human narratives through the lens, with a particular focus on Korea’s cultural heritage and the resilience of its people.
His most celebrated body of work, Haenyeo: Women of the Sea, emerged from a three-year immersive project (2012-2022) documenting the female divers of Jeju Island. Traveling across Jeju’s mainland and satellite islands—including Biyangdo, Gapado, Marado, and Udo—Kim photographed haenyeo immediately after their dives, capturing raw, unguarded moments as they surfaced from depths of up to ten meters without oxygen equipment. His distinctive approach features a simple white backdrop placed behind each subject, deliberately isolating their faces, weathered bodies, and tools from their natural environment. This technique draws viewers into an intimate encounter with the divers’ humanity—their deep wrinkles, age spots, dripping diving suits, and steadfast gazes—transforming each portrait into a silent yet powerful text of lived experience.
Kim’s haenyeo series has been exhibited extensively across four continents, including solo exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (UK), the Korean Cultural Centre in Beijing, Malmö Museer (Sweden), Östasiatiska Museet in Stockholm, and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (Australia). His work has also been featured in group exhibitions such as The Ocean After Nature (a traveling exhibition curated by Independent Curators International) and Culture of Jeju: Haenyeo Special Exhibition at Korea’s National Intangible Heritage Centre.
Through his photography, Kim does not merely document a vanishing tradition; he honors the dignity, strength, and historicity of women whose lives have been shaped by the sea. His images serve as enduring evidence of human resilience—a visual chronicle of faces that carry the scars, wisdom, and unwavering spirit of those who have lived tenaciously within nature’s harshest embrace.
